


In the Shadows

by ThreeWhiskeyLunch



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Omega is a Shit Hole, Rare Pairings, Two People Talking in a Room
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-10
Updated: 2017-11-10
Packaged: 2019-01-31 09:10:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12678819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThreeWhiskeyLunch/pseuds/ThreeWhiskeyLunch
Summary: Preitor Gavorn is a glorified pest control technician. Some days, he needs a reminder why he does it.





	In the Shadows

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the video of Preitor Gavorn you can watch at the Shadow Broker's ship of Preitor sitting on a bed while an unknown human male enters the room.

It’s never night on Omega, just as it’s never really day. Time passes in a winding whirl, always constant and dank. Always the same vortex of booze and dancing girls and fresh faces that so quickly turn into despair. Living on Omega, one quickly faces the reality that nothing will change. Certainly some had tried. Archangel had almost succeeded on a path where too few had attempted to tread. But then he too had disappeared and Preitor thought that was a pity. He’d been more than half tempted to join up with him at one point. But when he’d heard his team had been killed by mercs and their home base nearly blown to bits that was that. No more Archangel. No more wishful thinking.

Aria pays better than most and doesn’t try to screw him over. She doesn’t care he’s barefaced. All she wants is for him to do his job keeping the vorcha in line and doesn’t give a varren’s ass how he does it. He had hired a team of a few turians and batarians and they do their jobs and do them well. Keeping the vorcha population under control holds a small level of satisfaction. Very small most days. Enough to keep him going to work. Not so much that he feels fortunate to have the job that he has.

The lights of Omega come in through the blinds of the bedroom, slicing the furniture into fragments. Through the window he can see the building across the alley, only slightly more squalid and run-down than the one he lives in. If he squints through the red haze, blurs his vision more than just a little, he could have almost been on Palaven, with the red-hot sun beating down between the tall buildings of Cipritine casting afternoon shadows. For one brief moment, he allows himself to believe this is true before he shakes his head and refocuses his eyes, bringing himself back to the here and now.

Some things just aren’t worth revisiting.

He tips the bottle up, swallowing whiskey in several long gulps. The burn is strong enough to make him groan and cough. He swipes his mouth with the back of his hand, revelling in the lack of etiquette. He is overall filthy with the grime of Omega’s underbelly, certain that Vorcha guts are probably stuck to his armor. He doesn’t care. The day had been complete shite. He’s tired. His muscles ache. He just wants to lose himself in the bottom of this bottle of whiskey and forget for a while where he is and what he does and who he does it for.

He feels a gentle tap on his shoulder, something hard knocking on his armor. A gentle reminder that he is not, in fact, alone. Ice rattles in an otherwise empty glass just at his aural canal.

“You’re a barbarian.”

Preitor says, “Yes,” but reaches for the glass anyway, filling it to the brim with the contents of his bottle.

“You could have at least shed your armor before you sat.”

He sighs heavily. “I could have. Are you going to nag me? Or join me?” He sets the half-empty bottle on the floor with a thud, taps the empty space next to him on the bed in invitation.

The man sighs, even as he sinks down next to him, the bed shifting with his weight. “You have something disgusting on your back. I don’t even want to think—”

“So don’t, Daniel.”

His lover shakes his head and raises his own glass to his lips. “Today that bad?”

“Not better. Not worse. Like any day.”

He’s too aware of the pointlessness of it all. His insignificance. His tiny life. He does a job anyone could do because it’s easy. Because it’s simple and uncomplicated. And because it keeps him on Omega, where David is. Because David refuses to leave, especially now that Mordin Solus is gone, entrusting the clinic into his assistant’s hands. He performs pest control in the hopes that life will somehow improve: not for Omega, but for the two of them.

“Why don’t you reconsider? We need security at the clinic. Especially now that Dr. Solus is gone.”

“You’ve got your mechs.”

“But a face to go with—”

“Gozu district has never been more trouble free since the plague.” He tries to subdue the sour notes that enter his subvocals, thinking about all the turians that had died needlessly. “You don’t need me. And you can’t pay me what _she_ does.”

“The money isn’t important.”

“It is if you want to keep living in this grand style.” His voice drips with sarcasm and he waves his hand in the air, indicating the modest apartment and what little it encompasses.

“We could move somewhere smaller. Closer to the clinic—”

“With all the humans, you mean.” He bites the words out and regrets them instantly, sighing. But the truth is humans are all that’s left living in Gozu. “Fuck. I’m sorry.”

“No. It’s ok. You didn’t mean…” Daniel’s words trail off. “So we won’t move.” Ice clinks the side of his glass as he drinks his own whiskey. The smell is sharper, heavier than what sits in Preitor’s own glass. He wrinkles his nose at the smell. “And you’ll continue to have days that are no better and no worse than the one before, and come home grouchy and disgruntled.”

“I thought that was what attracted you to me in the first place.”

“Well, actually. It was the vorcha guts on your armor…”

Prietor side-eyes Daniel at the admission, sees the glimmer of humor in his deep brown eyes. “Dr. Abrams. Is there something you’d like to confess regarding your...odd sexual kinks?.”

Daniel smiles wickedly. “Not at the moment, no.” And then he winks and his mouth stretches wider as he grins.

“Because I’m pretty sure, if vorcha entrails do it for you, I’ve got some in my cowl—”

The teasing smile is gone, replaced quickly by a sour frown. “Ugh. No.”

“--and stuck in the creases of my armor.”

The man shudders, overacting his disgust. “Which has now soaked into the covers. Maybe even the mattress—”

“I’ll clean it up.”

“Damn right, you will.” Daniel swallows the last of his whiskey and falls backward on the bed with a sigh. He’s quiet for a while. So quiet Preitor looks over his shoulder, thinking he’s fallen asleep. Shadows fall over the man’s face, cutting it into small sections of cheek and nose and forehead. His eyes shine as he blinks up at the ceiling. He stretches out one hand for Preitor’s and takes it, twining their fingers together through thick turian gloves. “We could leave Omega…” he says.

“You’d hate yourself for leaving the clinic,” he says, although he probably doesn’t say it fast enough. He swallows down the urge to take the man up on his impulsive offer, to say _Fuck yes. Let’s get the fuck off this Spirits forsaken rock_. For better or worse, Solus left Daniel in charge of the clinic and Preitor knows Daniel well enough to know that if they left--abandoned--the clinic, the guilt would eat away at his lover until nothing would be left except a shell of his former self. “No. We stay.” He squeezes Daniel’s hand, trying to reassure him. And perhaps himself as well.

The man sighs again, ice shifting in the glass he’s rested on his stomach as he breathes in and out. Minutes pass with only the ever-present hum of Omega to occupy his attention. A dull throb that has become a part of his bones. Eventually, Daniel sits, leans over and kisses Preitor on his crest, a soft, tender caress that closes Preitor’s eyes, makes him lean in closer to the human male. “So. We stay.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> Come find me on [tumblr](threewhiskeylunch.tumblr.com)!


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